wake up and kill

Why the idea of a curated movie subscription service hasn't taken off yet is a bit of a mystery. I mean, Oprah managed to steer people's literary tastes for 15 years, but cinema somehow just can't duplicate the shared artistic experience. Netflix and other streaming services offer "recommendations" based on previous downloads, but that's trying to guess your preferences...not introducing you to something exotic, unusual or strange.

When Arrow Video (already a popular cult label in Europe) launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund its expansion into the US market, it asked funders to pay up front for a relatively foggy release schedule of Blu-ray titles with no guarantee that they'd like what they were paying for. Much like the Criterion Collection, people were investing in the good judgment of Arrow's staff, counting on the fact that future restorations would be worthwhile viewing experiences...even if they might not have been a day-one purchase to begin with.

Wake Up and Kill (1966) is an excellent example of the label's willingness to color outside the lines a bit but still deliver something that satisfies the fan base. Predating much of the poliziotteschi craze that heated up after The French Connection, director Carlo Lizzani's ripped-from-the-headlines story concerns the exploits of real-life smash and grab sensation Luciano Lutring (Robert Hoffman) whose criminal career made headlines after he hid a machine gun in a violin case, causing the press to dub him the "sub-machine gun soloist."

Really not much more than a petty thug whose plans for a large scale operation always seemed to go awry, Lutring got more mileage out of his lounge singing wife, Yvonne (Lisa Gastoni), whose efforts to keep her husband out of jail included TV interviews begging him to turn himself in to authorities and even cooperating with police to feed them his whereabouts as the couple bounced from one backroom hotel to the next. Lutring is pretty typical of most criminals who earn Robin Hood-like accolades: an undeserving crook whose career was manufactured by the media and reliant on their attention to feed his ever-expanding ego.

Wake Up and Kill can be a chore to get through in one sitting. At two hours (the English-language version, also included, is significantly shorter) Lizzani's film is not only overly long, but padded with some pointless misdirection as Lutring travels from one city to the next trying to elude capture while earning a "living" snatching jewelry. Although the scenes brings a cool street-level authenticism, there's nothing particularly clever about Lutring's criminal career and Lizzani simply tacks on one job after the next, as is he's creating a dutiful cinematic timeline.

But it's the sense of people and place that make the film interesting to begin with. Hoffman's performance is rarely charming or sympathetic; he goes out on a limb to make Lutring a wife-beating loafer who's found the easiest way to make a living he can. Together with Gastoni, their anti-romance has a Breathless / Bonnie and Clyde trajectory that bookmarks each section of the film like chapter stops as does Ennio Morricone's extemporaneous sounding-score. Wake Up and Kill lacks the style and narrative drive of later poliziotteschi...but it's an interesting stepping stone that almost everyone besides Arrow Video completists would have skipped.

The Blu-ray / DVD combo includes two cuts of the film remastered in 2K and looking very nice. There a good bit of natural grain and soft-focus shots throughout but they all seem inherent to the source. Extras are limited to a trailer and illustrated booklet with writing on the film from Roberto Curti, author of Italian Crime Filmography, 1968 - 1980.